Cleric’s Funeral Becomes Protest of Iran Leaders

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The funeral of a prominent dissident cleric in the holy Iranian city of Qum turned into a huge and furious antigovernment rally on Monday, raising the possibility that the cleric’s death could serve as a catalyst for an opposition movement that has been locked in a stalemate with the authorities.

As mourners carried the body of the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, tens of thousands of his supporters surged through the streets of Qum, chanting denunciations of the leadership in Tehran that would have been unthinkable only months ago: “Our shame, our shame, our idiot leader!” and “Dictator, this is your last message: The people of Iran are rising!”

Although the police mostly stayed clear during the funeral procession, some skirmishes broke out between protesters and members of the hard-line Basij militia. As the mourners dispersed, security forces flooded the streets, blocking all roads around the ayatollah’s house, and some militia members tore down posters of him, witnesses said.

The funeral of Ayatollah Montazeri, who died in his sleep on Sunday at the age of 87, appears to have put Iran’s rulers in a difficult position. They had to pay public respect to a senior religious scholar who helped build Iran’s theocracy and was once the heir apparent to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Yet they are also keenly aware that his mourning rites could set off further protests, especially as Iranians commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, on the Ashura holiday this Sunday.

More broadly, the continuing protests underscore a deadlock between the opposition and the government, which wants to avoid the cycle of martyrdom and mourning for dead protesters that helped create Iran’s revolution, analysts say.

“The demonstrators can’t dislodge the government, and so far they have not been able to build a broader national movement,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But the government is also stuck: they don’t want to shoot people or move to a broader crackdown, so they’re left hoping this all fizzles out.”

If the protests become larger or more violent in the next week, he added, the government may well take a more aggressive and riskier approach, arresting opposition leaders like Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

Both Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi were in Qum for the funeral, and as Mr. Moussavi was returning to Tehran a group of Basij members on motorbikes repeatedly cut off his car and then attacked it, according to the Rahe Sabz Web site. The attackers smashed one of the car’s rear windows, injuring one of Mr. Moussavi’s bodyguards and provoking a fight with other guards. Mr. Moussavi was not hurt, the Web site said.

The government made some conciliatory gestures Monday, including a respectful statement of condolence from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that was read aloud at the funeral. The statement hailed him as a “well-versed jurist and a prominent master” and said “many disciples have benefited greatly from him,” according to state-run Press TV.

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Credit
The New York Times

But the statement also described Ayatollah Montazeri’s break with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 as a mistake. That line provoked jeers and shouts of “Death to the dictator!” — shouts that were audible in video posted on the Internet. In one clip, protesters could be seen shaking their fists and chanting, “We don’t want rationed condolences!”

“Words cannot describe the glory of the funeral,” said Ahmad Montazeri, the ayatollah’s son, in a telephone interview on Monday night. But he added that 200 to 300 Basij members had partly disrupted the ceremony, and that by evening Basij members and security forces had filled the streets and occupied the grand mosque of Qum, preventing the family from holding a planned mourning ceremony there.

The government jammed phones and Internet service through much of the day, and the BBC’s Persian service, a crucial source of information for many Iranians, suspended broadcasts, saying the government had been jamming it since Ayatollah Montazeri’s death on Sunday.

There were also protests in Najafabad, Ayatollah Montazeri’s birthplace. Videos posted on the Internet showed large crowds of people chanting “Dictator, dictator, Montazeri is alive!” and “Oh, Montazeri, your path will be followed even if the dictator shoots us all!” Banners in the bright green color of the opposition movement were visible.

The protests in Najafabad, which began Sunday, were apparently set off in part by disrespectful reports about Ayatollah Montazeri’s death on right-wing news sites, including Fars News, which initially referred to him without the title “ayatollah.”

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Iran’s most senior dissident cleric, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, in Qum, Iran. He died Sunday.Credit
James Hill for The New York Times

Iran’s hard-liners have long spoken dismissively of Ayatollah Montazeri, who was under house arrest from 1997 to 2003 for his antigovernment critiques. In the months since June’s disputed presidential election, he had unleashed a series of extraordinary denunciations of the government crackdown on protesters, declaring that the government was neither democratic nor Islamic and that Ayatollah Khamenei was unfit to be the supreme leader. He also dismissed the results of the election, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won officially by a landslide, as fraudulent, echoing the claims of opposition leaders.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s criticisms carried a special weight because of his status as Iran’s most senior cleric. And despite the fact that many younger opposition supporters are generally hostile to clerics, his advocacy was meaningful to them.

“It was important that the most senior cleric, politically and religiously, came out and supported the people,” said Mohsen Kadivar, a former student of Ayatollah Montazeri who is now a visiting scholar at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s defense of Iran’s opposition also helped to unite its religious and secular wings, some analysts say. And he may turn out to be more influential in death than he was in life.

“His death has become a pretext for the movement to expand,” said Fatimeh Haghighhatjoo, a former member of Iran’s Parliament who is now a visiting scholar at Boston University. “He was the only cleric who gave up power and supported human rights, the characteristic that earned him respect from various political factions.”

Correction: December 23, 2009

An article on Tuesday about the outpouring of mourners for Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri of Iran, a prominent dissident cleric whose funeral on Monday became a large antigovernment protest rally, overstated the religious credentials of Mohsen Kadivar, an expatriate Iranian scholar who said the ayatollah’s outspoken criticisms were especially appreciated by Iran’s younger opposition supporters. While the scholar is a former student of Ayatollah Montazeri, he is not an ayatollah himself. The article also misidentified the university where Mr. Kadivar is a visiting professor of religion. It is Duke University in Durham, N.C., not York University in Toronto.

Robert F. Worth reported from Beirut, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto.

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